Nissan Leaf to fix 5,000 cars for start-up glitch

Nissan Motors will launch a repair service and will fix more than 5,000 of its all-electric Nissan Leaf cars in response to the vehicle's start-up problems.

This is not a safety issue as the vehicle will not stop running while being driven, but may not restart once it is turned off, Nissan said in a statement.

All 8,000 or so of the Leafs built in Japan and the U.S. will be covered by the repair service, though only a very small proportion of the vehicles have been affected by the glitch, Nissan said.

The repair will fix programing in the vehicle control module of the vehicles, Nissan added.

Customers will be instructed to contact dealers for the free repair. In some cases, dealers will arrange to perform the software fix at a work place or a customer's home, Nissan spokesman Brian Brockman said.

We are fully aware that this issue may have inconvenienced some of our customers, the automaker said in a statement.

This campaign is a voluntary measure, unlike that is usually mounted when the issue is structural and violates safety standards set by the Transport Ministry, the carmaker added.